


The Hands of the Clock

by LacePendragon



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Life Is Strange Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cults, F/F, Faunus Exist, Femslash, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Inspired by Life Is Strange, Rewind Powers (Life Is Strange), Slow Burn, Trans Blake Belladonna, Trans Penny Polendina, powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-03 13:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19464967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LacePendragon/pseuds/LacePendragon
Summary: Upon witnessing a car accident, one day, Ruby Rose discovers she has the ability to turn back time – not for long, only a few seconds or minutes, but enough to stop the accident and send her on a quest to discover why she has these powers, where they came from, and what she can do with them.With the help of her sister, Yang; their friend Blake; and new girl Penny, the four set out to uncover the secrets of their small town, the island, and the dangers of these powers, and just what these strange happeningsmean.





	1. The First Incident

**Author's Note:**

> _Life is Strange_ is one of my favourite games, despite how much I do not like the ending, and I really wanted to play around with the concept, as well as what could be done with it with the RWBY characters.
> 
> So, Ruby is Max, except not; Blake is Chloe, except not; Penny has the powers from the second game, but isn't the same character; everyone is gay, and life could be both better or worse, depending on what time of day it is and what disaster Ruby is currently tied up in.
> 
> So, in short? Welcome to Life is Strange, but much gayer, with a better ending, and a whole lot more nonsense.
> 
> Oh, and also satanic cults, because the original villain doesn't work in this setting because there's no good stand-in for him. So, I made my own. With satanism and blood sacrifices and goat demons.
> 
> Welcome to the island of Patch. Where things just got... a lot more complex.

_ Rain pounded Ruby’s back as she struggled to push herself to her feet. She pushed off the mud-slick ground and slipped, splashing back down into the cold, wet puddle. With a quiet cry of pain, Ruby pushed herself to her feet. Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating the lighthouse. She took a deep breath and stumbled forward, lifting one arm to shield herself from the rain. She kept walking, one foot in front of the other, shuffling bit by bit toward the lighthouse. _

_ The lighthouse would keep her safe. She knew that, but she didn’t know  _ why _. What was going on? Why was the lighthouse so important? _

_ Ruby fell forward, fingers dipping into the mud as she scraped and scrambled up the hill. Mud dug deep under her fingernails, and her hands grew slick and filthy. She kept on, cresting the hill and finding the eye of the storm. _

_ A hurricane. Or a tornado? Massive and spinning out over the ocean. Rain and wind swirling into a vortex of death that had Ruby sucking in a breath and stumbling back from the sight. _

_ What was this? What was happening? _

_ Overhead, the sky was dark and tinted blood red and bruise purple. Black veins blistered the deep grey of the storm clouds, until the sky looked like something out of a horror movie. The red and purple and black followed the wind of the vortex, until the vortex sucked in the colours and turned itself into the eye of some demonic horror movie. _

_ A boat whipped through the air and smashed into the lighthouse. Ruby threw her arms in front of her face and screamed as it fell toward her. _

* * *

It was a clean, October morning, with the air smelling of the salt water of the nearby ocean and the wind cool and crisp, but pleasant, as it swept through Ruby’s hair. She hummed to herself, rose-decaled headphones pulled over her beanie and resting snug against her ears as she walked alongside Yang. School started in fifteen minutes, and the building loomed ahead, two stories and speckled with ivy and climbing roses.

Music pumped through Ruby’s veins, the volume low enough that it was closer to a hum against the bones of her ears. Yang’s voice sounded over the noise, blending everything together into a whirlwind of information that kept Ruby from thinking too hard about her nightmare.

“I was thinking we should go to Blake’s after school,” said Yang, her arms folded behind her head and her bag hanging from one hand, not quite brushing her hair. “She’s been doing this film project on decay and she really wants us to see the first edits.” Ruby lifted her head to watch her sister wrinkle her nose. “I don’t get her obsession with grim stuff, but you know, she’s pretty interested in it, so gotta go cheer her on.” Yang flashed her a bright smile and Ruby smiled back, albeit smaller.

She couldn’t shake the images from her mind. The storm, the colours, the lighthouse. The near death. As a kid, she’d held the belief that if you died in a dream, you died in real life, and her nightmare had brought that back into focus, choking out her startled yell when she’d first jerked awake, not long before sunrise.

“You okay?” asked Yang. The song switched as she spoke, leaving temporary silence to hang between Ruby’s ears. “You’ve been… weird this morning.” Yang cocked her head to one side and gave a toothy smile. “More weird than usual, I mean.”

Ruby snorted and pushed, half-heartedly, at Yang. But when Yang’s smile fell away to her furrowed brow, pursed lip, big sister frown, Ruby’s resolve cracked and she sighed, slumping and dragging her feet as she walked.

“It’s just…” She trailed off. “Nightmares, I guess. Really bad ones.” She stared at the ground. She was  _ sixteen _ . Nightmares weren’t supposed to bother her this much. They hadn’t in almost four years! And when she was twelve, they were fine, but now? She was almost an adult. Adults weren’t scared of stupid dreams about weird thunderstorms.

“Aww,” said Yang, throwing her right arm, the prosthetic one, around Ruby’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. We all get them. Just try and find something to distract you, okay?” Yang hummed. “You wanna talk about it?”

Ruby shook her head. The sooner she forgot about this dream, the better. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken up so scared, or the last time something had shaken her so badly. Even horror movies were fine. She  _ loved _ watching them with Yang and Uncle Qrow while Dad cowered in Uncle Qrow’s shoulder and screamed at every little thing.

“All right,” Yang lifted her arm and ruffled Ruby’s hair. Ruby squawked and swatted at Yang’s hands, turning in time to see Blake coming toward them from across the street. Blake lifted an arm and waved at them, picking up her pace as she ran toward them.

She skipped to a stop in front of them both and grinned, her cat ears perking and flexing in the cat ear cut-outs of her beanie.

“Morning,” said Blake, smiling at them both.

“Morning,” chimed Yang and Ruby, one after the other.

Blake looked up to the sky and toward the ocean, where grey clouds were gathering on the horizon. A storm, but it would probably pass over Patch, with the way the winds and tides were. Ruby had been studying them in environmental sciences and found that the tides swept away the worst storms from Patch. Like a blessing from a guardian angel, or something similar.

“Hey, how was your thing last night?” asked Yang. Ruby nodded. Blake was on the shortlist for an art scholarship and last night had been the first interview. She’d been shaky and anxious for a week, fixing and changing her portfolio, adding and removing images. Ruby hadn’t been worried. Blake was the best artist she’d ever known, and she was always working hard to make it all count. Plus, their school had a great art program.

The fancy charter school they went to -- Beacon Hall -- was split clean down the middle between art students and jocks. Ruby was an amateur photographer, Blake was a mixed media artist with a focus in sculpture and painting, and Yang was a rugby player in the fall, and a track star and baseball player in the spring. In the winter, she played hockey, and in the summer, soccer. Despite their differences, they three had ended up friends in first year, and they’d stuck together even as senior year began for Blake and Yang.

Ruby lingered down in tenth grade. The option to skip was there, but her math scores were too awful to give her the go-ahead. Now, there wasn’t really a point. Besides, she liked having all the extra time for photography classes, with everything else being so easy.

“I think it went okay,” said Blake, twirling a strand of long, dark hair around one finger. Her ears twitched back and forth in the October winds, which picked up as they circled closer to shore to get to school. “I mean, I won’t know for  _ weeks _ …” She trailed off, nibbling with sharp canine teeth at her lower lip.

Yang slung an arm around Blake’s shoulders and tugged her close. “Ah, you worry too much, Blakey. I bet you knocked it out of the park.”

Blake gave Yang a dry look. “I hear it’s the anxiety that does that.”

Ruby snickered as Yang flushed red, her ears turning the colour of Dad’s freshly ripened tomatoes. Yang shot Ruby a look and she shrugged in response, fighting a grin. She and Blake were always making jokes about their anxiety, something Yang struggled to understand. Yang knew what  _ depression _ was like, but all-encompassing fear? Not so much. Even the car accident that took her arm, three years ago, hadn’t kept her down for long.

“Seriously,” said Yang, nudging Blake. “How’d it go?”

Blake shrugged, chewing on the inside of her cheek hard enough that it was visible even with Yang between her and Ruby.

“Good, I think,” said Blake, her voice soft and her eyes downcast. “They were impressed with the pictures of my sculptures, and they requested a tour of the school gallery for next week. So… I guess that’s a good sign?”

Ruby gasped, hands flying over her mouth. She bounced up and down as she walked. “It’s a great sign!” She swung around Yang to dance around Blake, while walking backward. Luck kept her from falling over. “Ah, Blake, they really like you!”

Blake waved her off. “I don’t want to get my hopes up yet,” she mumbled, one hand moving to rub the back of her neck. The other fiddled with the strap of her bag. “It’s still early. We’re only in October.” She swallowed, visibly, eyes darting to Ruby, to Yang, and then away. “But… I really hope they pick me. The school is…  _ breathtaking. _ ”

Ruby grinned. She’d heard Blake talk up the art university she wanted to go to for almost a year and a half now. Ruby had taken virtuals tours with Blake sandwiched between her and Yang, laptop balanced on her knees as they watched the videos while squished together on Yang’s bed.

The whole place was  _ gorgeous _ and it was less than two miles from Yang’s campus -- she’d gotten early acceptance last year, as part of her rugby championship win -- which meant Ruby would get to visit Blake whenever she visited Yang!

Blake shook herself and Ruby paused, half-tripped, and beamed when Yang caught her by the wrist, swinging her back into place on Yang’s other side.

“I don’t wanna think about it right now,” said Blake. She sighed. “Let’s talk about something else. What do you wanna do this weekend?”

Yang grinned. “Movie marathon?” she offered.

Ruby leapt at the suggestion. “Horror movie marathon!” she cheered.

Yang gave her a flat look. “Really? You and horror movies?”

Ruby stuck her tongue out at Yang.

“I think a horror movie marathon sounds great,” said Blake, offering a small smile at Ruby. “I’ve been wanting to watch a movie about werewolves lately…”

Yang hummed. “Do you think werewolves are like, monster faunus?” She looked at Blake and Ruby cringed a little. Of course, Yang didn’t mean it like  _ she _ thought that, but it could have been phrased better. That was Yang for you, always saying things in the most blunt and direct way possible.

“No, werewolf mythology actually traces its roots to vampires and changelings,” said Blake, taking on the voice she always had when she was excited. “I’ve actually studied it a lot, and werewolves have so little to do with faunus that it’s believed the mythos started independently of the knowledge of faunus!” She bounced a little as she walked alongside them. “The main thing that faunus influenced was anime culture. Cat girls and horse girls and all that.” She wrinkled her nose and so did Ruby.

They both knew how  _ that _ representation and influence had turned out. Ruby had seen a few too many adult ads on her laptop before Yang had shown her how to use an adblocker.

Apparently “child genius” didn’t extend to blocking invasive ads.

“Oh, gross,” said Yang, voicing their collective thoughts.

Blake shrugged. “It could be worse,” she said, before rolling her eyes. “At the very least, no one ever turned us into  _ vampires. _ ” The girls snickered, remembering the cringeworthy vampire movie marathon they’d had the month before.

“Oh!” Blake perked and pulled at her bag. “I’ve got a mock-up for the poster in here -- the one for the environmental fundraiser -- I wanted to run it by you both before I sent it for printing.” She dug around more and frowned.

“It was in here somewhere…” She pulled it out just as a gust of wind blew between the three of them. It sent the poster into the air.

“Shit.” Blake grabbed for the paper but it fluttered across the street. She scowled. “Hang on.” She darted across the street and snatched up the paper from where it lay in the grass. She turned and headed back across the sidewalk and into the road.

The roar of a car hit Ruby’s ears and she turned to see it coming.

Panic seized her chest.

Everything went too fast. Ruby stepped forward to shout a warning. The car screamed around the corner. Blake’s head turned toward the noise. Too little, too late. The car ploughed into Blake and she rolled across the top. She slammed onto the asphalt. The car kept going. Ruby screamed, head turning toward the car, and back to Blake.

And then it was over.

Ruby stared, frozen. Yang shouted and bolted into the street, falling to her knees to stare at Blake’s broken, twisted body. Ruby kept staring.

What happened?

How had this happened?

Everything had been fine. Everything had been  _ fine! _

Pain ripped through her head and Ruby stumbled, falling to her knees as it blinded her. She screamed, clutching her head as the world blurred and shook. She tasted ozone. She heard thunder.

She reached out toward Yang. Was Blake alive? Was she okay?

Yang was crying. Ruby kept reaching.

And

The world froze. Tears hung in midair. Noises vanished. The pain hit its peak and Ruby’s fingers, outstretched, curled inward toward her palm.

And

Everything rewound.

Yang got up and walked backward toward the sidewalk. The car backed up and Blake leapt into the air, rolling forward to the hood before landing on her feet. The car vanished around the corner from whence it came. Blake stood at the side of the road, arm in the air to wave.

Ruby got up and stared. And kept staring. Nothing made sense.

Time resumed.

Blake took a step into the road. The sound of the car slammed into Ruby’s ears.

“Blake! Get back!” shouted Ruby, before she could think. Blake jumped back and the car sped by. Gone in an instant. And Blake was fine.

Ruby fell to her knees.

_ What happened? _

“Ruby?” Yang’s voice echoed in Ruby’s ears. Ruby kept staring at the street. At the space where she’d seen Blake get hit by the car. She  _ knew _ what she’d seen. Blake had been hit by a speeding car. Broken and twisted and bloody after she’d rolled across the top of the car.

Bile rose in her throat. She tried to swallow but found she couldn’t.

It had happened. She’d  _ known _ it had happened. She’d  _ seen _ it happen.

But then it hadn’t. And now, Blake was fine. The world was fine. Nothing had happened.

But hadn’t it?

_ Hadn’t it? _


	2. Second Verse, Same as First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the response, everyone! I've loved seeing what you all think of this story, so far. I've got a lot of fun ideas for it, so please, keep reading!

_The rain stung Ruby’s cheeks and eyes, yanking her vision into a tight, blurry circle around her. She clawed at mud beneath her cheeks and yelped. The mud crawled up her arms like a living thing. She screamed and yanked but the mud kept coming, climbing, until it hit her throat and started to squeeze._

_The rain poured into her open mouth as her screams were drowned out by the thunder and by the hurricane vortex out over the water. It loomed, as if it could see what was happening to Ruby, as if it wanted a piece of her as well._

* * *

“Ruby!”

Ruby jerked, panic seized her throat and tore at her, choking her like the mud and rain. She yelped and jerked back from the grasping hands. Her vision blurred and refocused on gold and purple -- _Yang._

Ruby took a breath. She was on the sidewalk. Blake and Yang crouched in front of her, on either side. They watched her, brows furrowed, shoulders hunched, hands extended.

“You okay?” asked Yang. “You fell, after you warned Blake.”

Blake looked to Yang, then back to Ruby, nodding. She gave Ruby a small smile, the barest upward twitch on either side of her mouth. “Thank you,” she said, “I didn’t see them. I could’ve…” She shivered. “But I didn’t, thanks to you.”

_Thanks to her._

Ruby stared passed them both, to the scene she saw replaying in her mind, over and over again. The car, again, and Blake. But this time, Ruby didn’t have time to shout a warning. The car came around the corner, struck Blake, and she rolled across it. Landed bloody and broken and catatonic. Maybe dead.

Definitely dead.

And then in reverse, blurry and faster.

Then forward again, the same as before.

Bile rose in Ruby’s throat, souring her mouth and leaving her throat itchy and awful. She willed the images away, but they refused to fade. At every blink, they grew brighter and more vivid, as if the nightmare was flash frozen against the under-sides of her eyelids.

“Hey,” said Yang, snapping her fingers in front of Ruby’s face. “Did your nightmare really freak you out that badly?”

The first one or the second one, Ruby wanted to ask. But Yang didn’t know about the second one -- the one that had just happened. And was it a nightmare? It’d been so vivid, so immediate, and she hadn’t been asleep. It was like she’d slipped through the folds of her mind and ended up somewhere else, if only for a minute.

It was… otherworldly, that feeling.

But what was it? Not a nightmare, no. But it had to be, didn’t it?

And what had happened with Blake? What about the crash? Why were there two conflicting sets of memories in her mind?

Ruby shook her head, slow and unsteady, and let Yang help her to her feet.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled, even though she wasn’t.

Yang slipped an arm around Ruby’s shoulders and held her close. Ruby leaned into the solidness of her sister’s hold, closing her eyes. The images flashes behind her eyes. She snapped them back open and took a deep breath, shaking.

“You sure?” asked Yang, her voice gentle and worried. Ruby looked up at her and saw Yang’s furrowed brow, her wrinkled nose, and her curious, soft eyes. “We could take you home, if you wanted. I’m sure Dad and Uncle Qrow won’t mind.”

Ruby thought of the house, empty but for Zwei, since her dad and uncle were both already at work. She thought of the images, swarming up in her mind, and the confusion that plagued her. She swallowed.

“No,” she said, voice tight. She cleared her throat. “I’m—” She stopped, realized that Yang wouldn’t believe her, and corrected herself. “—I’ll be okay. Really. I just need… a distraction.” And maybe a psychological evaluation. She had to be losing it. Or maybe she’d just gotten food poisoning. Or the flu. Those could cause hallucinations, right?

But something _that vivid?_

She had no idea. She needed the school wifi so she could look all this up and find out if other people had hallucinations that rewound and showed real time, afterward.

“Okay,” said Yang, though she sounded as unsure as Ruby. “Let’s go.” She kept her arm around Ruby as they walked, Blake on Ruby’s other side so she was sandwiched between the two.

The walk to school was uneventful, after that, and Ruby was silent the whole way. Yang and Blake kept up conversation, holding Ruby close and tossing comments her way, but neither pressured her to speak.

Ruby was grateful. She wanted a chance to think, to feel, to _forget._ All of this was ridiculous and stupid. She had no idea what had happened, and she needed to put it behind her.

It’d been a hallucination from a lack of sleep and fear lingering from her nightmare, that was all.

At school, the three girls divided up, and Ruby went through her morning classes without thought. Her dad gave her a funny look, in English Literature, obviously concerned by her silence, but Ruby told him she was tired, after class, and he let it go.

He was good like that, at giving people space. Ruby wasn’t sure if she was grateful for it or not, right now.

Right before lunch, she had photography. Normally, it was her favourite class, but right now? Ruby wanted to be anywhere else. She was tired, and scared, and cranky, and all she wanted to do was curl up in her sister’s arms, or her dad’s, or her uncle’s, and sleep away this whole nightmare.

She didn’t get the chance.

Distracted, dazed, and exhausted, Ruby didn’t notice her camera, close to the edge of her desk when she shifted. Slow, she didn’t notice when she bumped it and it slid closer and closer.

Nothing happened.

Then, she bumped it again, the edge caught her thumb, sending a stinging burn up her arm, and Ruby jerked, smacking the camera out of reflex of pain.

It smashed to the floor in a dozen tiny, broken pieces.

_No._

Ruby stared at the broken camera, her vision blurring and chest tightening. _No_. After everything else today she was _not_ losing her camera. Her camera had been her _mom’s_ camera and if she lost it then she wouldn’t have anything left from her mom.

_No, no, no._

Tears slipping down her cheeks, Ruby reached for the broken camera, ignoring the stares and whispers around her. She shifted in her seat, leaning forward, almost toppling and—

The camera pieces flew back together and leapt into the air, landing, fully formed and unmarred, on her desk. Ruby sat back up and rubbed at her eyes, blinking a few times. She picked up her camera, but it was _fine._ Just like Blake had been. She stared, unable to understand.

Her camera had broken. She’d seen it break. She’d _felt_ it break in her very bones. She looked around, but while some of her classmates seemed to notice her distress, sitting in the back had, by and large, prevented people from noticing. Oscar, who sat a few seats away from her, was watching her, but he quickly turned when she noticed him watching.

If she’d been hallucinating, wouldn’t more people have noticed? She’d cried out. She’d yelped. Certainly, people would have noticed. But…

But none of them had.

No one looked her way. No one acted like she’d done anything. Even Uncle Qrow, her photography teacher, wasn’t watching her, beyond a quick glance to narrow his eyes and raise an eyebrow, asking silently if she was okay. He’d ask more later, when it wouldn’t disrupt the class, she knew that.

She nodded and studied her camera, turning it over in her hands.

It had broken. She _knew_ it had broken.

But how could she prove it?

…She’d cut her hand when it had fallen.

Ruby set down the camera, still tuning out the room around her, and tugged at her sleeves, revealing the outside of her thumb, where the camera had knicked her when it had fallen. She sucked in a breath and stared.

The thin red line stared back at her.

The camera _had_ cut her. Which meant it _had_ fallen. Which meant what she’d seen was real. Her camera had broken. And now it wasn’t broken.

But… how?

Ruby took a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking her head, also slow, to clear the fog that settled over it.

Facts, Ruby. Find the facts. If you remove all other possibilities, then whatever remains, however impossible, must be true. That was a Sherlock Holmes quote, wasn’t it? Blake said it a lot, when she talked about her horror and supernatural movies, so it had to come from something. Probably a book, Blake’s taste in movies wouldn’t make for smart sounding quotes.

…Then again, Ruby had read parts of the books Blake read, and they didn’t make for smart sounding quotes either. Mostly her glimpses had involved snippets of people taking off clothes and throwing themselves at each other, with battling tongues and moving hands and all sorts of other sexual… stuff.

Yang always laughed when Ruby blushed and told her to stop reading over Blake’s shoulder if she didn’t want to end up “scandalized”. Ruby always told her she would handle it. Blake always rolled her eyes and kept reading, never caring if Ruby read over her shoulder or not.

Anyway.

The _point_ was that Blake had said the quote and now the quote was in Ruby’s head, and it was going to help her figure out what, exactly, was going on in her life right now. This couldn’t be hallucinations, not if she had evidence to the contrary, so strike that.

What other possibilities were there?

Uhhh. Ghosts. Except she knew there weren’t any ghosts at the school. She’d checked. And that wouldn’t explain the car.

Clairvoyance? See the future and prevent it? But that didn’t explain the cut.

Maybe she was hallucinating fixing things, and the first half was real, but the second half was fake? But no, that would mean Blake was _gone_ and she wasn’t.

Ruby pinched herself and yipped. People looked at her. She blushed and stared at her desk. Uncle Qrow raised his eyebrows at her, but said nothing. He kept on teaching, like a good uncle/teacher.

Well, that settled that: she wasn’t dreaming. That was another option down the drain. Drat. That had been her favourite one, too.

So, what did that leave?

Well. There was _one_ option, one that Ruby got from a movie she’d watched with Blake and Yang, a couple weeks ago. She remembered it because the main character had had cool hair, and Ruby wanted to dye the red parts of her hair blue, to match.

Yang kept trying to talk her into it. Blake kept trying to talk her out of it. It was a pretty funny argument to watch.

That option? _Time travel._

Which was absolutely ridiculous! Time travel didn’t exist. And if it did, why was some stuff rewinding – the people, the car, the damage to the camera – but not Ruby, herself? Was she immune to her own… wacky stuff? She didn’t know. Nothing made sense.

But if she wouldn’t think of anything else, then that _had_ to be the answer, right?

She almost hoped the mushrooms in last night’s dinner had been drug mushrooms by accident, and that she was in a coma in the hospital, with none of these questions plaguing her. That would be way, way simpler.

Stupid supernatural stuff. It was supposed to stay in the movies!

_Okay, calm down, Ruby._ She didn’t know anything for sure, yet. She could still be wrong. The only way to know for sure was to test it, right? So, that was what she had to do. She had to test whether or not she had… time travel powers. Well, when she put it like that, it sounded _absolutely insane._

Ruby gave a quiet huff of frustration, steeled herself against her own fears, and raised her hand.

Uncle Qrow’s gaze swung toward her.

“What’s up, kiddo?” he asked, leaning casually against his desk. Ruby flashed him a nervous smile. At least she had figured all this out in Uncle Qrow’s class. If it had been any other teacher, she might not have been so bold, but all the teachers at Beacon were part of the new age curriculum to encourage all sorts of positive, mentally healthy stuff. Which meant this was totally okay.

“Can I be excused?” asked Ruby, clutching her camera close to her chest. “I need a break.”

Uncle Qrow gestured for the door. “Have at. Don’t forget your assignment.” He flashed her a smile as Ruby shrugged her bag over her shoulder and darted out of the room. No one noticed, or Ruby didn’t think they did. The school was pretty chill, despite it’s somewhat gentrified, over-zealous, everyone must be the best in their field _thing_.

In the hallway, Ruby took a moment to lean back against the closed door into the classroom. She pulled out her earbuds and slipped them into her ears, flicking on her music and letting it wash over her. The echoing silence in her body that left her cold and shaky faded with the soothing drums and bass. She took a breath, then another, as the calm wisped into her veins.

And down the hallway she went. The halls were mostly empty, except the custodian, Tukson, who winked when Ruby passed. She giggled and waved to him. Tukson was one of her favourite people at school. He was a young custodian, working off debts from the community college he’d dropped out of. He was supposed to be an accountant, but he’d dropped out of his certificate program to pursue his dream in becoming an author. So far, no bites from agents, but Ruby had read some of his book, and it was really, really good.

Ruby shook off her thoughts as she passed him, and turned down the shorter hallway to slip into the bathroom. She set down her bag by the door, in the corner where it was safe, and walked over to the sink to take a deep breath.

Her camera hung around her neck, safe. It was a comfortable weight against her chest, a reminder of the shared dream she and her mom had. Mom had never gotten to be a famous photographer, but Ruby had so much of her mom’s work plastered all over the walls of her bedroom. It had become almost like wallpaper, with Ruby’s own work clinging to fairy lights and strings strewn from wall to wall, corner to corner, clothespins holding the pictures in place and makeshift mobiles dangling from the ceiling, spinning her pictures round and round with the slow oscillation of her bedroom fan, propped up on a pair of milk crates in one corner.

Ruby stared at her reflection. The shift of the glow of fluorescent lights against her dark hair as she turned her head from side to side, the bags beneath her silver eyes, a mark of her nightmares, the purse of her lips and the light splattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The tan of her skin that was a combination of her dad’s Chinese heritage and her mom’s Mexican. She smiled at herself, seeing the mix of the two and finding comfort in it. They were always with her, even when all this craziness was happening.

But that wasn’t why she was here. She was here to figure out what the heck was happening to her.

Taking a breath, Ruby pulled her camera from around her neck and gently, ever so gently, tucked it into her bag. She sealed the bag and made sure it was out of the door’s path and any people who walked, and shuffled back to the sink.

Staring at her hands, Ruby found the thin, red line against the side of her thumb, which marked when her camera had fallen and sliced her.

A fall that had, apparently, never happened.

Ruby looked back at her reflection, her expression somewhere between annoyed and curious. Pensive, her dad might have said, or perplexed. He was good at descriptive words. Uncle Qrow would have said she was gonna get wrinkles and tickled her until she laughed and told him what was bothering her.

But neither was here, right now. Ruby had to handle this on her own.

“How do you test time travel?” she muttered to herself. She thought of the two times things had gone wrong today.

First, Blake and the car. The image, the “memory”, if that’s what it was, still made her shiver and squirm in fear and discomfort. Analytically, the events were thus: Blake got hit by a car, Ruby panicked, reached out, and it all reversed to just before Blake got hit, giving her a chance to call out a warning.

The second time was much the same: the camera fell, Ruby got upset, reached out, and it all reversed so that her camera was fine and no one was wiser. The only proof her memories and the cut on her thumb.

Ruby stared at the red line, thin and barely there, but so, so important to what she was doing.

She had a few ideas. The first was that she had to reach out to reverse stuff. She’d done it twice. Both times she’d reached out.

The second idea was that she wasn’t affected. She remembered both events, saw them forward and backward, _and_ she’d kept her injury from the falling camera.

_Hrm._

Two situations. Different, but also the same. But how could she be sure?

What was it Dad said, when he was feeling science-y? Once was chance, twice was coincidence, three was a pattern? Something like that. Scientific data needed at least three data points to prove a pattern, or so she was taught in class.

So, she needed a third data point. Something to prove both of her suspicions.

Ruby stared at herself in the mirror, thinking.

An idea occurred to her. A way to prove what she was thinking. A way to get more data.

_Third was a pattern._

Taking a deep breath, once more, Ruby steeled herself. Then, she did the absolutely dumbest thing she could have done, in this situation.

She punched the mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, long or short, are adored, please and thank you! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love! Please leave reviews. I love them. And this is a fun story, so I wanted to share it with the internet!


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